by Henry Astor

I was fortunate enough to meet Bruce Crower at a party thrown by drag racing legend Dode Martin in 2003. It was a brief introduction but none the less a seminal moment for me. The article in Popular Mechanics entitled Six Strokes of Genius underscored my feeling that I was in the presence of pure genius.  Time Magazine thought so too when they included him in their Best Inventions of The Year.

Having spent a lifetime making engines go faster, it seems Bruce is now focusing on making them more economical. And like all the best ideas, it is pretty simple (on paper at least). He’s taken a 6-stroke engine that tops off the familiar 4-stroke internal combustion process with two extra strokes of good old fashioned steam power.

Basically, the engine uses the otherwise wasted heat from the engine to make steam. As the engine finishes its fourth stroke an injection of water enters the combustion chamber and, due to the heat, evaporates into steam. The resulting expansion in volume is enough to drive the piston down to create an additional power stroke.